JAMES

I haven't slept well the past several months and the last two nights even less. I am very soul weary. Many times I've wondered just how much I can take before it begins to take a toll, now I know.

The phone rang this morning. My girlfriend Donna. I love Donna. There are no perfect people on this planet. I never expect perfection from people for the sole reason I can't be perfect myself. The idiosyncracies that are possessed by each person rang from one side of the sky to the other. All have faults, some are more annoying than others. (I don't know where I'm going with this, just bear with me.)

Donna has been there for me when I've hit bottom. I think I've hit bottom 4 times in my life. It's not a pretty place and I tend to hide from people when I head down. I've been heading the past couple of days.

Nothing could have prepared me. Nothing. She tells me to sit down. Now Donna is the best for stories, gossip, last minute - much needed - little known information, and a bit of drama to boot. Love Donna. I tell her, "I'm sitting down." Nothing could have prepared me.

"James is dead."

In movies when a man is at war and a grenade has gone off next to him, they present the silence with loud ringing in his ears. I felt the same way. My mouth dropped open. Life paused. I couldn't move. I forgot how to speak.

She continued, "He hung himself." The whole inside of me dropped. That undescribable feeling of your being dropping. That mind-numbing feeling. The coldness that sweeps through your body.

She's sobbing while she's talking to me, but my mind can't make out anything but sounds. Tears are falling down my cheeks but the sobs didn't come till I was on the winding roads to work. I picture this young man. My age. With a brightly colored tatoo of a dragon down his arm. I picutre this cause this is how I first talked to him.

I remember where I met James. I remember having fun and dancing with him. Every time I talked with James it was a laugh. I remember the next time I saw him cause I recognized him by the tatoo. The dragon with three piercings. I was hiding out in the apartment below Donna's because of the company she had at the time. James gave me a foot rub. I thought, he's nice enough, he's funny, he's just not my type.

So I introduced him to Donna. They hit it off great. In fact they lived together for several years. She loves him with all her heart. When Donna would swing low, he hung with her. When most other men would walk out, he hung with her. He stayed and he helped. The two were good together.

I can't make sense of this. The always unanswered question of 'why'. Why? My age. Life has so much to offer. There's so much to do and see and explore. Even now I can't make sense enough to form the questions my physie can't understand.

I'm just numb. And floored. And wounded. To my depths I am wounded.